


Arrow Fall

by Merfilly, SLWalker



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Multi, Recovery, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 22:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A modernized retelling of Roy Harper's descent and rise from drug use.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arrow Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published over the course of 2008. First time, I believe, I have published it in complete form.
> 
> Many thanks to SLWalker for the contribution in the midst of this, and to all those who helped me continue it.

Ollie pocketed his cell phone again, frowning as he did. Barely two full weeks into the road trip and yet it had been at least three days since Roy had returned one of his messages. He kind of felt bad for Roy being home alone, but Roy had insisted he could hack it, that he didn't want to be cooped up with both Ollie and Hal in a pickup truck for days on end.

He wondered if maybe some Titans business had popped up. Roy had seemed so depressed after that last weekend trip out to the coast.

"I'm starting to really not like the feeling I've got, Hal," Ollie said, still frowning.

Hal snorted. "Every time you say that, I want to make a chicken form around you, you old mother hen."

"Not like him to be this sullen at me, without even telling me what he wants to be sullen about." Ollie shook his head. "If he doesn't call by the time we make the next city, I'm calling Dinah to go check on him. I don't care how grown that boy is, he's still a kid."

"Alright, Ollie."

`~`~`~`~`

"What do you mean, go check on the kid for you, Oliver? Isn't he with you?" Dinah's exasperation was very apparent as she juggled her cell phone on one ear, and continued to ring up the last sale of the day.

"Didn't want to come, Pretty Bird."

"Oliver, he's only what, sixteen or seventeen, for pity's sake. If he didn't want to go with you, why the hell didn't you have him come stay at my place?!" Dinah snapped at him. 

"He's been taking down thugs since he was thirteen. He said he could handle it!" Ollie snapped back, and then bit his lip. Even Hal glanced sideways at the blond archer, knowing just who he was speaking to. That woman of his had a hell of a temper.

"Oliver Jonas Queen, we WILL discuss this when you get home. I don't want some man with no idea of how to care for a half-grown kid taking up so much of my time if we're really going to look at making a future..." she fussed, before she totaled the sale. "I'll go. Now goodbye." She hung up, calling the customer over to finish the transaction.

* * *

The house had been empty, and had the look of being barely lived in lately. Dinah had to switch gears from 'concerned friend' to 'detective' in a fast hurry. A lock pick got her inside, and she inspected the house without touching anything else.

What she saw worried her. Speedy seemed to possibly be sleeping here, but little else. And certain drawers, where people might stash small trinkets or fast cash all seemed slightly out of place.

Whatever was going on had just become a mystery, one that had Dinah preferring not to lie in wait for her prey to return. Shortly, Dinah Lance was gone, and Black Canary was on the prowl for information.

`~`~`~`~`

The local kids knew Speedy. The little ones, the ones that hadn't learned to be afraid of life, told her about the older boys Speedy had been hanging around. The ones that smelled funny and smoked things that looked like crooked little cigarettes.

Canary wondered if Speedy had learned of drugs in his neighborhood and had started a case all on his own. If so, she'd applaud his efforts and then kick Green Arrow in the knee for dropping the ball on being there for his partner.

If not...

The 'if not' made her stomach turn and want to be utterly sick.

Because drugs were something kids in Afterschool Specials dealt with, or the thugs that Dinah had to fight every night, and sometimes misguided kids in other classes.

It couldn't happen in their crowd.

* * *

//Don't want to think...just need a fix...dreams, ideas all go away. Not alone, not a failure, not ... just not.//

The redhead knew he had to find some cash soon. He looked one more time at the bow in his hand, then down the street toward the pawn shops. He started to set foot in that direction, but then he looked at the bow again.

If he got rid of it, maybe he'd quit being reminded of how he'd failed Raymond. He'd be able to forget that his team had up and decided they didn't need him or anyone. He'd forget that Ollie would rather run off with Hal so his bird couldn't find out about them...

He took one more step, then whirled back to go hide the bow where he'd fallen asleep the night before. He'd find some other cash, because the bow was still his life. All he needed was a good fix, and he'd get his head back on enough to use her.

He'd just stepped back onto the side street off that alley, to go and try to find some form of money, when the car idled up next to him.

"Hey kid..."

Ten minutes later, and Roy was earning the money he needed...and one more thing to feel like a failure for.

* * *

The Black Canary had told Green Arrow over the phone that she thought Speedy might have bit off more than he could chew. He had, in turn, told her that he and Green Lantern would head back just as soon as they finished working on the case of a biker gang harassing the locals they had befriended in their latest stop.

Black Canary had not much cared for the response, but understood it. She took to the streets again, hunting deep into the gangs and various homeless groups she knew of for the missing teen-hero. She half thought of calling the Batman in Gotham, to see if Robin could lend her a hand, but the cross country trip would take so long.

She set her mind and body to the task at hand, intent on finding the boy and saving him from whatever folly he had found.

After all, how hard could it be to find a red-headed sixteen year-old on the streets, when the boy had only known life as the ward of Star City's wealthiest man?

* * *

Roy set the needle down as euphoria raced through him. He did flick the band off his upper arm, then settled back on the mattress he had found tossed out behind the tenements. It was filthy, likely had lice, and was moldy, but it was softer than the concrete. With as sore as he felt, having gone too long between fixes, and feeling dirty in ways he did not like to think of, he was grateful for small comforts.

He stroked at his bow, hand moving over the wood repeatedly, letting the drugs remind him of a time when pleasure was simply pulling the string, releasing, and knowing the arrow had flown true.

Before he had boldly kissed a girl that had made him blush with her invitations. Before her cousins had held him down in the hot desert sun and beaten him senseless. Before Raymond had decided he had to leave.

Just him, the bow, and the target. It had been heaven. He hadn't needed anyone then, just Raymond's teaching to let him fly like the hawk he bore the colors of.

Now, as his heart pumped the drugs through his veins, he knew that peace again, and let sleep claim him, before he remembered just how alone and useless he truly was.

`~`~`~`~`

Black Canary had passed the alleyway twice that night. Her street sources told her the kid matching her description had been seen in the area, and she had doggedly refused to move on. Her gut told her she was close to finding him, and she rarely ignored her instincts.

This time, she thought she saw motion down the dark alley, and turned into it. She kept a fighting ready stance, aware of the muggers that haunted the lower class neighborhoods, but she did not think she was in any danger.

As she passed a broken fire escape, she saw him, dimly outlined by the lights that filtered out of the slum apartments above them. A boy, about the right size to be Speedy, flailing in nightmares that only he could fathom on a filthy mattress. She felt her heart seize up as her eyes found the bow, shoved far from the boy.

It had to be Speedy.

She moved close, kneeling just out of reach, and inspected everything. There was a cord...the glint of a spoon...and the needle.

Her eyes went to the teenager with pity, wondering just how one of their own could fall this low. What had driven Speedy to seek refuge in a drug, especially anything that had to be injected? She swiped the items up into a Ziploc, so she could be sure what her suspicions told her it likely was, and tucked them away. She then gathered the bow, slinging it crosswise on her small frame, as she'd seen Speedy do once or twice in a hurry during a shared task.

After she had it secure, she reached out, moving just a little closer, and laid her hand on the boy's face.

`~`~`~`~`

Roy panicked as nightmare gave way to real touch, the soft touch of a hand on his face. His eyes flashed open to the sight of a woman...no, not any woman, but Black Canary. Ollie's woman.

"No..."

"Speedy, it's alright. I need you to come with me." She shifted her touch to run it through the boy's filthy hair. "Please." She put none of the pity, none of the anger at Ollie, in her voice. Only the honest-to-god concern she felt for this boy who had risked his life beside her lover for the past three years filtered into her voice.

Roy did not want to fall for it, did not want to give into her gentle tones.

But then she took his hand in her other one, still touching his hair, and pulled.

"Come home with me, Speedy. Let me help you."

He pulled back, ashamed, because this woman, a hero who had been on the League as long as Ollie, a woman who had grown up with the greatest heroes of all as her family, was touching his unclean self.

"Can't."

"Yes you can, Speedy. And you will. Because I believe in you. I believe you want more than this." She poured her fervent belief in the goodness of those who chose this life into her words.

And he heard it, standing on shaky legs. 

"I'm...hooked," he said softly. "It'll get ugly. You should just..."

"Take you home, get you into a shower, and then I'll be there for you. I won't let you face this alone, Speedy."

//Yes, you will. They all do. No one wants me.//

His thoughts were turned to ash in his own mind as the woman looped her arm around his waist, face set in determination.

"Roy."

"Roy?"

"Yeah."

"Dinah."

* * *

Ollie finished talking the police about the bikers, and was all but demanding Hal ring them up a transport **right now**. He'd tried calling Dinah, but now _she_ wasn't answering, and that didn't set well when her only comment to him earlier had been to get home, and that she would handle Speedy.

He thought about the fact he should have introduced them long before this, properly, about five minutes after she'd hung up.

"Hal, come on!"

"Hold your horses, Ollie. If Dinah says she's on it, she's on it. Have you ever known her to not finish something?" The ring-jockey pulled up a disc under them and set their course for Star City, hoping Ollie was jumping at shadows.

* * *

Getting Roy home had taken some effort. Dinah was worried about how thin he was, when she could feel his ribs under her guiding arm and hand. Once there, first priority was getting him cleaned up, before the symptoms hit. Thankfully, Roy seemed to agree, and even held still while Dinah used a fine tooth come to be sure his hair was lice-free.

"It's going to get ugly." Roy looked up at the woman with sunken eyes. "You really should just take me to the shelter."

"And let you hurt someone when you get yourself free to go find some more? I don't think so, mister." She petted his hand. "You want free of this."

"Yeah."

"I'm going to make sure your need doesn't over come your want to be clean." Dinah pointed. "Go sack out, Roy." 

"It's your bed," he protested. 

"And it's farthest from the door. That window doesn't open, either." She wasn't trying to be hard-nosed, but Roy could see the logic.

"How'm I ever gonna..." Roy's words were shushed as she placed two fingers, scarred and calloused by thorns and her other lifestyle, covered his lips.

"Don't you dare talk to me of debts, Roy. You should know by now I am who I am, and helping is the one thing I do best." She had to keep it on the level of their heroics, else this boy would flee like a scared rabbit, she guessed. How he could be so wanting for human compassion that it would terrify him to have it, she did not know, and chalked one more line up on the tally board against Oliver.

"Yeah, okay, Dinah." He shuffled to his feet, looking at his bow and quiver where she'd hung them on the hat rack. They were safe, and maybe he might be...for a little while.

* * *

Ollie went straight to Dinah's house...and was met by the very determined brunette in the foyer. "No, Oliver, you take yourself right on home. I have the boy, he's asleep, and you're not going anywhere near him until he's ready to see you!"

Ollie shook his head. "Pretty Bird, he's my son in all but fact! You can't keep me from him!" 

"I can and I will, Oliver Jonas Queen, when I found the boy down in Skid Row, using!" Dinah's voice was harsh but low, and struck both Ollie and nearby Hal with the force of a ton of bricks.

"Using?" Ollie asked, his gut clenching. Dinah nodded, pulling the half-forgotten Ziploc out. 

"Hal, I think it's smack....can your ring tell me?"

The Green Lantern checked, and nodded slowly, pale under his domino.

Ollie looked at the bag, looked at his best friend, then turned to appeal to his lady, only to have the words die in his throat. He hung his head, and turned to go.

"I'll wait, Di...I'll wait." He walked out with a heavy heart, letting Hal take him home.

His adopted son, his sidekick...hooked on heroin.

* * *

_Written by slwalker_

Using.

He kept going over it in his head, that word. Repeating it, trying to actually comprehend it, trying to push it away, all at once. Using. Roy.

It twisted between his ears, and in his gut, and made his hands shake, the hands that were always steady when they notched an arrow and pulled the bowstring back.

Using.

Roy... his Roy, practically his son.

Using.

Hal tried to talk to him, but he didn't hear it. Over and over, just one word, one boy and a million feelings.

Using.

Just that word, in his head, in his gut, spreading through his veins in a sick parody of what Roy must have felt. 

_End piece by slwalker_

* * *

Roy started shifting restlessly, clawing at his arms as his skin itched. When he just could not sit still any longer, he rose and prowled the small apartment, while Dinah stayed between him and the door.

When the stomach cramps hit, he seriously considered moving past her and getting free.

She must have read it in his body, because her jaw hardened and she rose from the chair she had taken.

"We're going to make it through this, Roy."

Roy really wanted to ask her 'we?', but then she was right there, arms going around him. The pain in the middle of his guts chose that point to double him over, and he felt her tug him toward the bathroom. He really didn't feel like protesting at that point.

`~`~`~`~`

The redhead looked up at his merciless captor hours later. He had his cheek pressed to the cool tile of the bathroom floor while she blocked the door with her deceptively small frame.

He'd learned once that yes, she could throw him down on his butt from a sitting position when he tried to go over her.

"Be kinder to both of us to shoot me," he croaked.

"I believe in you too much to let you take the easy way out," she told him, keeping her voice even and smooth.

He'd never believe just how much she was screaming on the inside that this never should have happened to him.

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah watched as the muscles clenched and locked again. At least the boy was no longer heaving with the cramps working their way through his stomach. He looked feverish, she noted, and wondered if maybe he'd be too weak to try and get away.

She shifted, her legs almost numb from sitting on the hard floor in the frame of the bathroom's door so long. When Roy whimpered and curled in tighter around himself, Dinah decided it should be okay to move. She got a wash cloth and moved to him, cleaning him up with tender patience. Once she had him cleaned up, she curled around him, placing rolled up towels under both their heads for pillows. Maybe he'd sleep through some of the worst of it.

When he rolled into her hold, shivering violently, she decided enough was enough. It was hard, but she managed to manhandle him to her bed, getting a waste basket close to it, just in case. She pulled the covers up over him, then laid on top of them, one hand on his face, and a light afghan over herself.

`~`~`~`~`

Roy's eyes cracked open, dry and gritty, on the first day that no longer hurt him all over. He saw the tired, sleeping features of the woman that had spent the last week with him. He remembered threatening her, pleading with her, and outright begging for either death or dope. It made him flush darkly, especially as he noted the heavy circles under her eyes. 

He started to shift, and that made her eyes open slowly to look up at him.

She smiled, a hand coming up to pet his face lightly, and he decided moving wasn't so necessary, curling toward her so she could go back to sleep.

It was the least he could do, when she had given him so much.

* * *

Dinah got Roy to clean up again, and then come sit in a chair in her kitchen. They'd passed a quiet day, and the boy seemed to be handling it better. The pangs and cravings were there, but controllable.

"You look a little shaggy, so let me clean up your hair."

"Been thinking I might grow it out," he protested, but let her settle the towel around his neck better.

She caught his chin, tipping his head this way and that. "You'd carry longer hair well, my boy-o, but it's uneven right now."

He could not help the war in him, the glow of love and worship toward her for claiming him at odds with the cynicism that said she'd dump him too, just like all the others.

"You can even it up? And you think it would look good?"

"You've got the face for it. And yes. Used to touch up Daddy's hair between barber shop trips." She got a pair of scissors and a comb. She took her time, letting him relax in the age-old way that a haircut had on people, trimming the ends and evening it up, while leaving as much of the length alone as she could. When she finished, Roy was half-dozing, as she expected. "All done, boy-o. Why don't you go sack out a little while longer?"

"Not tired," he said, and was immediately yawning.

"And I'm a monkey," she teased good-naturedly. She wasn't ready to push him, not ready to figure out where they would go from this point with his recovery. It was too tentative, too new a holding point for him. "I stripped the bed while you were showering. Go take advantage of fresh sheets."

"Yes, Dinah." He padded off, and she puttered around until her sharp ears told her he was out.

Only then did she take her phone and go out on the small stoop of her place to call Ollie, the first contact she'd managed with him in most of the week.

"Dinah?" His worried tone on the other end confirmed what she'd thought. She'd seen from the news that Green Arrow had taken up a crusade on the drug trade in Star City with a mad vengeance. It was one Black Canary would join him in eventually, but not before this boy was safe from the temptation. Nothing, not her shop or her costume, could pull her away from Roy until he did not need her.

"Oliver. I think we've gotten past the worst of it," she said softly.

"You should have let me take him to the clinic, where he'd have had the best of treatments..."

"Oliver." She did not raise her voice, but the sharp edge warned him not to go there. "That boy is starved for a human being to actually hold on to him and make him feel safe. A clinic was not going to do it."

On the other end of the phone, she was sure her lover winced. "Okay, Pretty Bird, but he's going to need to come home and talk to me too."

Dinah considered. "Not yet, Ollie. You leaving him alone was a stupid thing, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was just the straw on the camel's back. I'll try to get him to open up to me...I'm more distant from it, and haven't hurt or betrayed him. It might make him talk, instead of suppressing." 

Ollie's annoyed grumbles made her shake her head. She knew she was right, with the gut certainty her father had trained her to have about people. "Ollie, Roy's fragile. You don't really handle things with care. Leave him in my hands. If I can't reach him...maybe I'll ask J'onn to stop by."

The loud sigh prefaced Ollie's capitulation. "Just...Di...let him know I'm scared and worried and I do love him."

"I'll do my best, Oliver."

She just hoped her best was going to be enough to help the boy that had wormed into her heart so fully in all his pain.

* * *

Dinah settled at the dining room table with Roy for breakfast. "I need to go to work today. The other girls have been great, but I have to make sure things are working right."

Roy had tensed; he knew he couldn't have her time forever, but it still hurt to know he was being pushed aside again.

"I thought maybe you could come in, lend me that strong back of yours, for some rearranging in the shop," she continued, without even acknowledging the flinch in him. "It's your choice...the place is yours, or you can keep me from going stark raving mad by working with me."

Roy looked up at her, seeing nothing but friendship in her eyes, and a respect for him that he wasn't sure he'd ever seen before in anyone older than he was.

"Yeah?" He thought it over, realized if he did stay in, he would get bored, and then that itch might get too strong... "I'd like to go with you."

"I'd really enjoy having you there," Dinah promised him, her warm voice making him blush.

* * *

_Gotham City_

"...no, haven't talked to him, Donna. No calls, nothing. Garth said the same thing. Even Wally is concerned." Dick frowned as he listened to the girl on the other end of the line. "Donna, we each had our reasons for disbanding...yeah, I know he said he didn't like the idea...no, I have no clue why Speedy's been missing ever since from the Star City news. Maybe's he's got a new identity I haven't figured out." He listened to her for a while. "Yes, Donna. It is real odd that he hasn't been seen with Green Arrow at all. I might be his best friend, but I don't know much about him outside of the Titans." He paused, letting her speak, and then pinched the bridge of his nose. "We all grow up; it was time for the Titans to break, and you know it. Speedy was the oldest of us; surely he figured out we were right." Dick was beginning to wonder if maybe Donna was right to worry, though. "Love you too, sweetheart. I'll call if I hear from ... alright, alright, I'll head out that way." Dick needed out of the Manor anyway. A trip to Star City might just be what the doctor ordered.

* * *

_Star City_

Roy collapsed dramatically on the couch as they got inside, exhausted in mind and body but in good ways. "How in hell do you drag yourself out every night after a day like today?" he protested, especially as she was still moving, going to the kitchen to cook. Dinah's laughter, he thought, might be one of the best sounds in the world.

"Boy-o, it's just a job. But I usually don't do that much in one day. Had been putting off the renovations for a while. I suppose I owe you a back rub for all your hard work." She got the food started, then came out and settled on the couch, over his hips, and started working his shoulders. He wanted to about melt into the cushions at her touch, but the feel of her sitting quite like that...he blamed that he was still a teenager, that he had not had any kind of action since...and every bit of relaxation fled at the memory of the last time he'd fooled around.

Dinah felt him tense hard, and wondered what she had done...until she saw the clench in his jaw and the tightly squeezed shut eye in his profile.

"Roy...Boy-o, what is it?" She moved back off of him, and was only barely braced when he twisted and flung himself into her arms, sobbing hard against her chest. She held him, petting his hair, shushing and soothing him.

The only thing she could really make out in his hodge-podge of Dineh and English was that he missed his Robbie so damn much.

* * *

Star City wasn't so far with a Bat Plane's assistance. Still, the former Teen Titan kept to himself until after dark. He had long ago figured identities out, but he didn't want to spook Oliver Queen. Easier to go talk to Green Arrow and pretend identities were really secret. Besides, showing up in civvies by day would have made Bruce mad at him for letting Ollie figure things out.

Night fall brought a criminal element out, even with a Star City that had experienced a rash of extreme vigilantism from her hero in recent nights. That Green Lantern had been seen there more than Coast City didn't even deter the worst of the gangs, and Robin found it fairly easy to track the Archer down. A bird-a-rang took a gun right out of one's hand, before Robin swung in, kicking another in the jaw hard enough to stun.

"Green Arrow," he said, as a net arrow pinned two men to the wall, and a bolo arrow took the last one down.

"Robin," the man said in a tired, gruff voice.

"Talk?"

"Roof in ten," the older man said, wearily pointing to a building.

"Alright." Robin threw a line, and was gone, while the native hero waited for the police to get close enough so that escape wasn't probable for this gang.

`~`~`~`~`

The first thing Robin noted, as a detective, was that Green Arrow was badly fatigued. The second was that he carried himself with his head and shoulders down, the look of defeat clinging to him.

"Wondered if you'd come. Couldn't leave town to get to you," Green Arrow told the boy.

Robin tensed all over. "What happened to R...Speedy?" he asked, voice settling slowly into the range of an adult.

Green Arrow's shoulders shook, before he looked up, meeting the domino-masked blue eyes with misery in his own green ones. "I failed him, Robin. And now he's recovering over at the Pretty Bird's, but it never would've happened if I'd just been here for him the way he needed me. Left him too alone, and guess he couldn't get out East to you kids."

//The sheer look of denial when the team agreed to break apart, to go their separate ways.// Robin paled as he realized whatever happened, he was at least half as guilty as Green Arrow in this, because he had left his best friend alone too.

"Tell me everything."

With the cool determination in the boy's voice, the archer nodded, and began confessing to him.

Robin could only listen, rage within himself, and try to cope with the guilt.

* * *

Dinah was the one to answer the door when Oliver Queen showed up to speak to his ward at last. He'd called ahead, arranging for her to not be too surprised when Dick Grayson came with him. Secret identities had not mattered much once Ollie had told Robin everything. What bothered the archer somewhere in the back of his head was that Dinah didn't seem at all surprised by Dick's appearance in the middle of all this.

Had to be a Gotham thing, or else those kids had gotten a little more loose with identities than might have been smart.

"Hello. He's asleep right now, but you're welcome to go back, Dick."

"Thank you, Miss Lance," he said softly, before he did just that, while Dinah pinned Ollie in place with a look that might have frozen Satan himself. They'd talked, certainly, but now that Roy truly seemed past the worst of it, Dinah felt she could afford to finally lash out.

"You and me need to go outside, Oliver," she said, her voice far too quiet for his hide's sake.

`~`~`~`~`

Dick moved out of the living room and back to the bedroom, where the door was half ajar. Slipping in quietly, he looked at what had happened because no one really knew how alone Roy had been.

Not even him, the Boy Wonder, half of the best detective duo in the world.

The redhead was curled in on himself, almost fetal position, a pillow hugged tight to his chest. The arms were skinny, and there was an overall gaunt appearance to the older teen that set Dick's nerves fully on edge again. He'd managed to calm down once he learned Black Canary was taking care of his Speedy, because he had to have faith in another Gotham-born hero that Bruce spoke well of...as long as one read through his monosyllabic grunts in her direction.

Now, though, his anger flared, followed sharply by guilt. As much as he wanted to hate the Star City heroes for leaving him to fall like this, he had to take a measure of the blame. Roy was supposed to be his best friend, and more, plus they had been teammates.

He moved closer to the bed, and was relieved that now Roy reacted. His head came up briefly, as if expecting to see Dinah, but instead found Dick there in a pair of casual slacks and a pull-over.

"Hey, Bowhead," Dick started, but his voice cracked, betraying the emotions running through him.

`~`~`~`~`

"I should punch you right in the nose, Oliver," Dinah began, once they were outside.

"Yes, you should." 

"Ollie, you make it entirely too easy for me to want to forgive you for this, when you really don't deserve it!" Dinah let all her breath out in an exasperated sigh. "I will pound you, in the ring, over this. Probably every time I ever spar with you from now on."

"And I'll deserve every second, Pretty Bird." Ollie looked up at the skies above his home city. "Dinah, how in the hell did I get so stupid? That kid has been my best bud for years."

"Maybe that's why, Ollie. You've seen him as your partner for years. An equal, someone to run with, to get in trouble with, and to have fun with." Dinah watched his profile. "You forgot along the way, he's a boy. A boy who lost two fathers before he came to be in your home, who has never known a mother or any other real extended family since he left the People."

Ollie let his gaze...and head...drop on those words. "I stuffed up big time."

"Sure as hell did. And he's not likely to be real warm toward you anytime soon. Or Hal, for that matter. Seriously Ollie...running off like that with him alone?"

Ollie did look at her then. "My parents were dead by the time I was sixteen, and I didn't have anyone there to hold my hand."

"Yeah, and it made you a complete asshole by all accounts, until you fell off a boat and had to make it on your own for real." Dinah glared at him. "That boy, on the other hand, seems to be a real sweetheart, one with this crushing need to belong that he masks behind the innuendo and cockiness I saw in him before. Don't even begin to try and rationalize your mistake by looking at him compared to you. That child has only known hardship and heartache with no trust fund to ease the way. Or did you not notice he only used the money in his allowance account to score? That he didn't touch the other accounts when I'm damn certain he could have figured it out? Your money, not his. His allowance, he feels he's earned...and I'd say he'd earned it plus a damn sight more. Namely a hell of a lot more attention from you!"

Ollie winced on the last note of her diatribe against him, as all the points scored home hard. "Didn't help that his team disbanded."

Dinah's lips pursed together. "That does worry me, and it did prove to be the last straw of feeling alone," she told him. So much had broken free of Roy after the plaintive cry for Robin. Dinah would never betray some of those confidences, especially on just how Roy did afford his buys, but when Ollie had called saying Robin was with him, Dinah had breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe, just maybe, a friend of that nature could get through the last bits of Roy's quagmire to help the boy move forward.

`~`~`~`~`~`

Roy swallowed hard, half thinking he was dreaming, or worse, that he'd backslid, or maybe never even fought his way clean.

Dick was there...and the crack in his voice was what made Roy know it was true. Dick was never _not_ sure of himself. Dick was perfect, the best at everything. For his voice to crack...there could be only one reason.

Dick was ashamed of him. Dick knew, and Dick hated him now for it. He must have come to make it clear that not only were the Titans over, but that they were no longer friends or anything more. Roy's eyes brimmed with tears at that realization, and he had to drop his eyes, huddling into the bed, pulling at the sheet for protection from his failure.

"'mano?" Dick called, suddenly afraid that Roy did not want him here, that Roy blamed him as he felt Roy should, for not knowing.

"'s'okay, Di...Robin. You don't have to tell me anything. I know I'm not worth the street under your shoes," Roy began.

"WHAT?!" The word exploded from Dick's lungs of its own volition, and then Dick was there, pulling Roy into his arms, on the bed, and just trying not to let the tears he felt fall. "You...no, Roy. You...you don't get to do that. You don't get to put yourself down when we all let you fall."

Roy blinked, moisture gathered on the tips of lashes. "Robbie?"

"Never letting you get so far from me, Roy. My Speedy. Never should have let go of you..." Dick carded his fingers through Roy's hair. "Going to let Bruce know I'm staying the rest of the summer here. Near you. Because...it's where I belong."

Roy looked into the determined face of his team leader, saw no pity, only love looking back at him, and broke.

The whole summer boiled up, lashed out in tears, pain, and sobbing words.

Dick held on, and swore never to let his Arrow fall again.

* * *

_Several months later in Star City_

Oliver Queen could be at the new rehab center down in the slums of his city as its principal funder. Hal Jordan was in place, a nondescript man in plain clothes and no bomber jacket. Dick Grayson blended in anonymously in the crowd, while Black Canary and Speedy entered by a side door. Wally West, Donna Troy, and Garth also blended into the crowd, preserving their identities, but there for their friend.

"Hello, everyone. I'm Speedy, and I have something to say as we dedicate this building to saving the youths of our city," Roy began. "A few months ago, I was one of them, on the streets, doing drugs, and now, I want to help others rise above it..."


End file.
